


the wishing well wishes you well

by wanderNavi



Series: wanderNavi Sampler [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Multi, again with the not retirements, what is it called when you’re half a ghost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:01:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22595191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderNavi/pseuds/wanderNavi
Summary: When they reach Robin’s house, Chrom approaches the front door first, raises a hand to knock, then hesitates.Lissa tries waiting patiently, but he’s been dithering all two days of this journey and she’s had it up to here with his mess. “She doesn’t blame you,” she tells her idiot brother and ineffectively shoulder-checks him out of the way and knocks on the door for him and his uselessly raised hand.
Relationships: Chrom & Liz | Lissa, Liz | Lissa & My Unit | Reflet | Robin, One-Sided Chrom/My Unit | Reflet | Robin - Relationship
Series: wanderNavi Sampler [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1708303
Comments: 4
Kudos: 33





	the wishing well wishes you well

They see the house while still several miles down the road, with a few copses of trees and low stone walls and about five billion sheep in between.

When they reach Robin’s house – squat with basically two rooms, white plaster walls overgrown with the dry, brown vines of winter, homely and unimposing – the sun just begins peaking past the curtain of gray clouds in the sky. Naga willing, the sun will come out further before sinking into the mountainous horizon a few hours later for sunset. Chrom approaches the front door first, raises a hand to knock, then hesitates.

Lissa tries waiting patiently, but he’s been dithering all two days of this journey and she’s had it up to _here_ with his mess. “She doesn’t blame you,” she tells her idiot brother and ineffectively shoulder-checks him out of the way and knocks on the door for him and his uselessly raised hand. Pointedly, Frederick says nothing at her constant impropriety.

They stand around that door for several minutes, waiting for movement, noise, or any signs of life, really, when the unwanted and unhelpful thought crosses her mind that maybe they messed up somehow and something’s happened and when Frederick and Chrom have had enough and break down this beautifully sanded and varnished, red-brown, wooden door out of reflexive, overblown concern, they’re going to walk into Robin’s house and find a crime scene. Or worse, they’ll find nothing at all, just dust settling over Robin’s racks of wine she keeps somehow expanding every time Lissa convinces herself to haul her ass and immaculate crème suede shoes and obtrusive white hems along the muddy trails cut with all the neatness and enthusiasm of a spoon digging at stone through the mountains leading to Robin’s place. They’d find her empty and cold bed with the sheets rumpled or made into ruthlessly tight corners, the food going bad in her pantry and cellar, books and piles of parchment stacked everywhere, cracked and tipped over into messy drifts, and the only signs that Robin ever existed left in the absences, in the muddy boots standing by her back door, in yellowed letters.

Lissa thinks, _Robin didn’t believe there’d be any issues like that yet_ , and, _Chrom’s going to lose it if on the first trip he’s managed to make out here, Robin’s disappeared_ and leans over an overgrown bush that hasn’t seen a pruning sheer in too long to squint into the darkness of Robin’s thick-glassed windows covered by a dense lattice woven out of thin wooden strips. Chrom grabs her by the back of her coat and wrenches her back upright.

Before Chrom has a chance to open his mouth and work himself into another fit of worry, Frederick asks, “Do you think she’s still asleep?”

Glancing between the ocean glittering under the brightening sky in the distance and at Frederick, Lissa doesn’t dignify the question with an answer. Of course Robin should be awake by now.

“She shouldn’t be,” Chrom says without the confidence of a man with years of firsthand experience with Robin’s sleep schedule and knocks the door again.

“Okay, that’s it,” announces Lissa. She grabs the doorknob, finds it unlocked as always, and slams her way into Robin’s house over Chrom’s startled squawk and Frederick’s quieter noise of surprise. Making her way through what could be called a foyer in a larger estate, Lissa shouts, “Robin?”

Frederick follows at her heels and with a low, ambient level of concern, asks, “Is her door always unlocked?”

“Frederick, I want you to tell me right now who in the world has the guts to actually rob Robin,” Lissa replies. The tension that has been gathering across her collarbones releases when Lissa sees an empty hook besides the back door and a missing pair of shoes.

“Robin?” calls Chrom, like she’s about to pop up from among the drifts of parchment turbulently thrown about everywhere or straight out of the walls. Lissa doesn’t know. She could pace the whole perimeter of the home’s interior in ten minutes and it’d only take her that long due to being forced to pick her way around precarious stacks of paper containing who knows what arcane spells that shouldn’t be left just thrown around the place.

“She’s out fishing,” she tells him, unease burnished down to nothing with her bemusement. “Come on.”

Frederick and Chrom trail after her through Robin’s semi-feral backyard garden, overgrown with vegetable vines and half a plot of weeds still not pulled out. Despite the flocks of sheep aplenty bypassed on the way here, Robin doesn’t own any livestock herself and it shows in the taller, scraggly grass growing on the incline tumbling down to the rocky sea. Lissa sees her far off form throw out a line into the frigid waters.

“Robin!” Lissa yells down the ground’s gentle rolls and swells peppered by flat, dark gray rocks. “Hey, Robin, we’re here.”

The pale blur shifts and, punctuated by a moment’s fiddling too far away to make out clearly, begins making its approach to their party of three.

As a natural consequence of Robin’s self-imposed rustication’s secluded nature in the muddy and near perpetually damp with fog and rain wilds at the eastern foothills of the Slieve Mountains, Lissa always ruins her clothing, her neatly done hair, and her bearings on the trip here. The environ and wildlife are actively hostile to the integrity of her dignity and she’d once found herself beating off the extremely confused and perturbed advances and inquiries of a wildcat led very far astray from its natural habits by the unusually prolonged snowfall last winter.

After the first couple of visits, she vehemently and fiercely fought off the retinue of assistants and guards to make the trips alone. She’d been an active, frontline member of two wars, however unwillingly; she can take care of herself. And most of all, Robin will never say a word, but she doesn’t need to for Lissa to know and hate the awkward stares, the shuffling pauses around each “General” as the entourage kicked up in Lissa’s wake refuses to openly acknowledge out of misplaced propriety and pity that Ylisse’s legendary force of nature has been reduced to – this.

Chrom lets out another muffled squawk behind Lissa’s back.

The sun shines through Robin’s hair and the fingers that tuck it back behind her ear as she draws near in all her woolen shawls and worn boots glory. She’s only grown more translucent since the last time Lissa’s seen her.

“Lissa, you’re earlier than I expected,” she says, delighted. To the boys, “I haven’t seen you two in so long, come in, come in.” She clasps a hand, freezing cold in a way that has nothing to do with the winter morning air blowing over the waves, on Lissa and Chrom’s shoulder each and herds them into the cottage house.

Chrom croaks, “Hey Robin,” and nearly runs into the doorframe.

She steamrolls right over him. “It’s so early. Have any of you have anything to eat? Drinks anyone?”

Lissa takes a seat gratefully. Walking for miles and hours on end doesn’t get any easier as everyone slips further into the still shallows of peace time. “Coffee?” she asks hopefully.

* * *

The next day, Lissa’s kind enough to not say anything indoors about how Chrom’s pulling himself helter-skelter, at loose ends with his worries and Robin’s obstinate, iron control over all their conversations. There’s absolutely no room for private conversation in Robin’s tiny quarters. The night before, they’d gone to bed in a cramped mess on a patch of clear space excavated from the contents of Robin’s research exploded over every imaginable surface. Squashed alongside Robin on her narrow mattress, determinately not touching her more than necessary for irrational fear that her hand won’t rest on solid flesh and sink into ghostly intangibility instead, Lissa’s reminded of all the worst parts of army life. Lissa can’t even awkwardly drag Chrom into the bathroom slapped on the side of the kitchen, adjacent to the enclave acting as a pantry. It literally can’t hold more than one occupant at a time.

Frederick has Robin’s captive attention ensnared in castle gossip and legislative minutia. Taking full advantage of her diverted attention for at least the next hour, Lissa drags Chrom outside into the freezing air. For further insurance, she ignores his “wait, what are we doing” to bring him down by the beach, on the tiny jut of wood extending into the noisy waves. She parks her feet with her back to the ocean, the better to watch Robin’s back door like a hawk.

“Why are you still like this?” Lissa demands from Chrom.

Seven years ago, Chrom would have shrugged and sputtered, indigent and oblivious, and Lissa would have found it annoying and distantly endearing. He has the decency to not do that anymore. He says evasively, “You and I both know why.”

Lissa viciously pinches him at the exposed strip of skin at the wrist between his gloves and the sleeves of his coat.

“Ow, ow, _ow_ , okay, ok _ay_. Lissa stop it, ow, _let go of me_ ,” he yelps and shakes her off. “Fine, _fine_. It’s just … a lot to take in. I haven’t seen her since she left Ylisstol.” Quieter, looking out at the waves instead of her, he says after a pause. “I know you warned me, but I didn’t think it had gotten this bad.”

As it bears repeating, Lissa reminds him, “There’s nothing more you can do.”

Chrom glances at her, and more hoarsely than she approves, says, “Lissa, be real with me. How much longer does Robin really have? You told me years but,” he waves a hand at how a spasm of bright sunlight tripping through the window shown straight through Robin yesterday afternoon and thrown a thin, weak shadow over her bookshelves, “that’s not years. She’s deteriorating at a faster rate than while she was at the castle. And there’s no way for any of us to know something’s wrong until it’s too late since she insists on living here alone where her nearest neighbors are several miles away or sheep and it takes two to three days travel in good weather to reach Ylisstol.”

“These are uncharted territories,” Lissa tells him. “No one’s ever done what Robin did.” Get possessed by a dragon. Kill an alternative self. Come back from the dead. That’s only the beginning; the list of things that Robin has done that no one else ever did can fill a book.

His lips pinch. Lissa continues, “It’s not as bad as it looks. Robin and I still think, if things progress as they are right now, that she can still last a few more years if she’s careful. You know Robin though. Things aren’t just going to stay as they are right now. She’s researching it. Things will improve. We’ll find a way.”

“I still think she should come back to the castle,” Chrom says.

Lissa thinks dully, _this is a woman who led a charge through an active volcano, that we all somehow agreed to_. Now that her mind is set and the factors at play haven’t drastically changed, nothing they do will sway Robin from her position. No amount of sound arguments and cajoling will bring her back to the castle. Chrom _knows_ this, he was there when she left, he was there on Grima. She says, “Don’t be ridiculous,” and flicks an eye back up the grassy slopes. There’s an enterprising sheep investigating Robin’s garden because she still hasn’t bothered putting up a proper fence. No wonder all her rose bushes died.

“I’m not being ridiculous,” says her ridiculous brother. “She leaves her front door unlocked. She lives alone and a good five days away from Ylisse’s best academies of mages and healers who can help her. I don’t mean to be disparaging of her current company, but I highly doubt the ocean and a bunch of livestock are going to help her find a solution to not being _dead_.”

“She’s currently not dead,” Lissa says, purely to be contrary. Chrom makes a noise like Frederick’s kettle boiling over.

As proof that being a general and the Exalt has taught Chrom some things, he manages to not outright howl, “She can be. She _will_ be.”

“I did not spend two days stomping through a muddy forest for you to ruin my one chance in months to visit my friend by spending all week we’re here arguing with her and inevitably losing,” Lissa threatens. A wave crashing into the pier emphasizes the snap in her voice.

“Lissa, she’s literally losing connections with this plane of existence,” he not-yells. “She - we’ve already given her one funeral. There’s an empty grave that still has her name on it.”

She has less restraint than her brother. “Robin’s made her position clear and it’s that she’s not going back to the castle! What’s really your problem?”

“What’s _really_ my problem? It’s a pretty big problem! If she really wants to find a solution quickly, she’d be where all the resources are, not in the middle of nowhere.”

Frequently, Lissa finds Chrom infuriating in the ways only siblings can, especially when he’s willfully avoiding the point and pretending he isn’t. If he keeps this up, all his claims that Robin’s his best friend are going to dissolve into posturing. Robin doesn’t possess the mental facilities to accept fussing – exhibit A in how she literally ran for the hills away from all the palace healers and fretting friends. Chrom had even helped her avoid the rampant and well-founded concern at first, because he instinctively knew without asking before anyone else did that it would drive Robin up the walls and tearing down all the tapestries.

Not to mention, Lissa’s been harboring a nagging suspicion for years, since Robin and Chrom stood in Ferox’s arena, champions, and they’d glanced at each other, high on adrenaline and a fight well fought, and shared identical conspiring grins.

She asks him, “Did you ever fuck her?”

His face instantly flushes red with rage.

* * *

Robin has a firepit outside for occasions like this, when there isn’t enough room around the table wedged against a wall in her kitchen-dinning room hybrid. As with every past visit, eighty percent of the meals involve some kind of fish and tonight’s no different. Lissa watches Robin glance between her and Chrom both ignoring each other from across the fire, sitting directly opposite and as far away from each other as they can, even if that forces him to deal with the wind blowing smoke into his face since she sat down first. She can see the decision to not touch any of this mess cross Robin’s nonplussed expression.

“Frederick says you have summary notes on the texts he brought?” she says to Lissa.

Lissa accepts the plate handed to her and nods. “Yes, we can go over them tomorrow if you’d like?”

Taking a seat, Robin waves away the offer and swiftly debones her fish. “I’m still not done skimming it. Spent longer than I expected catching up with Frederick earlier. And we’re still not done ironing out that road maintenace legislature. Day after tomorrow, before you do another exam.”

“Sounds good,” Lissa says and stabs the pale flesh of her fish with far less skill. At which point, the conversation switches to news from Ferox that Frederick had hauled with him, accessorized by Lissa’s contributions and Chrom’s reluctant participation.

It rains that night, as it tends to at this drenched place. How Robin ever manages to do her laundry is a matter beyond Lissa’s comprehension. She’s in the middle of yanking her hair into a braid for bed while Frederick and Chrom use up all of the hot water in the bathroom when Robin corners her by the bed to ask her in a low voice, “You okay?”

“What, yeah?” Lissa mutters back. Something metallic hits the floor and Frederick’s sigh carries over the popping cackle of the burning firewood.

“Hmm,” Robin says, unconvinced.

“Hey, I am,” she tells her and deftly ties off her hair and flings it back over her shoulder. Robin can’t be more tired than the time they sprinted through Plegia in pursuit of a dragon on the opposite side of the continent from Mount Prism. The army marched at a breakneck pace and every night Lissa collapsed with the very bones of her legs aching and tired, falling asleep before her numb bum even hits her bedroll and waking up far too soon the next morning a few hours later to do it all again. During the course of the march, Robin functioned on even less sleep. Despite sharing a tent, Lissa never saw her under her blanket. Yet the shadows of night in Robin’s home, with the only source of illumination the fireplace in her kitchen, sink deeper into Robin’s face than they had back then. Even Lissa gets exhausted just looking at her, surrounded by their thus far fruitless efforts.

Blessed as she is with ruler straight hair that never seems to frizz despite the rampant and constant moisture, Robin doesn’t bother to do anything about her own hair before bed besides shake it loose of a few bows pinned above her ears. She says, “You know there’s a clear view of my pier though the window on my door, right?”

Well, now she knows. “And?”

Robin hums again and pushes Lissa onto the mattress. “Alright. Scoot over.”

Lissa scoots over and plasters her back against the wooden wall. Over their heads, the rain drums down in an unending roll, beating down with so many fists onto Robin’s roof of gray clay shingles. Going down to the shore again tomorrow will be impossible in her shoes. She’ll have to borrow Robin’s boots, even if something about their fit always cramps Lissa’s toes or rubs blisters on her soles. Robin lays down, face turned towards Lissa’s, silently watching even as Lissa raises a questioning brow. This close, she can see that Robin’s eyelashes are now transparent.

* * *

“Where’s Robin and Chrom?” Lissa asks Frederick while blearily sipping tea, trying to chase away the fog of too early morning. A glance through the windows reveals fog, fog, and more misting rain. She can’t see more than around a dozen yards.

He answers, “They said they were going for a walk.”

“In this weather?” she mumbles, incredulous.

Bland as the flatbread he’d ruthlessly stuffed in her mouth for months on the campaign, Frederick says, “I was under the impression that this weather was the norm. Would you rather they woke you up even earlier with their conversation?”

She makes a rude noise in dissent. He sits down besides her and the chair creaks dangerously under his weight. “Yesterday, you and Chrom had an argument. What was it about?”

“If Robin comes back angry, you’ll know,” Lissa says bitterly.

“Oh. He –”

“Mnn.”

When they first brought Robin back, she had been solid and grounding, able to handle all the electric shocks of nightmares and slip ups in the confusing haze along the border between consciousness and unconsciousness of learned habits. They’d all just gotten used to her death, barring Chrom, and then suddenly she was back and swinging like nothing ever happened. She’d say, “Remember how several months ago,” and Lissa could feel her smile turning brittle and confused. Robin had ignored all their wincing, the same as she ignored the smell of sulfur clinging to all their clothing for weeks after that volcano scheme.

Donnel noticed something happening first by virtue of regularly spending months away from Ylisstol. The slow creep of Robin’s afflictions hit him in the face all at once where everyone else fell under the insidious trap of tiny incremental changes. They’d been making good of a day of mild weather, sparring on the castle’s training grounds, when in front of an audience of Chrom, Cordelia, Frederick, and Stahl, Donnel squinted over his blade crossed with Robin’s and asked, “Robin, did ya know yer, uh, kinda see through?”

That startled all of them, but not as badly as Robin’s answering noncommittal tone as she replied, “Yes, what of it?”

Taking advantage of throwing everyone off guard, she promptly disarmed Donnel.

Indoors, the effect wasn’t as noticeable. Among the dim candlelight and under crystal chandeliers, everyone could ignore the faint haze clinging to Robin’s outline. The rampant speculation spread as could be expected, but not even several hours long discussions between Chrom and Robin exclusively or the multiple times Miriel whisked Robin away for experimentation or observation shook out any clues. Several months later, her fingertips and the curved edge of her ears were like stained glass in the harsh light of the midday sun. By then, everyone was walking on eggshells when Robin and Chrom were in the same room together.

Fully aware of how this makes her sound like a petulant child and that not even the excuse of being a late riser can save her, Lissa grumbles, “I still don’t understand why Chrom didn’t properly court her.”

That’s a lie.

“It is not my place to speculate on such matters,” Frederick says. “But you are as aware as I of the interpersonal dynamics at play, at the barracks and at the courts.”

What a polite way of saying that the politics and optics were shit and there were too many vested powers that would sooner set the castle on fire than give Robin an inch more influence than she clawed for. Miffed, Lissa pushes her teacup and saucer against a snow drift of paper and pillows her face on her crossed arms resting on the tabletop.

Some time later, while drifting in an uncomfortable half doze, the front door creaks open and two sets of boots stomp in along with the vague musk of wet mammal. Lissa lifts her head with her nose scrunched up against the smell in time to see Robin set a wicker basket of fruit and glass bottles and something wrapped in brown paper down by the sink before whirling back outside, back door furiously slamming shut in her wake.

* * *

On the fourth day of their visit, the rain comes down in lashing sheets and the thick clouds blot away almost all of the day’s scant light. Even then, Lissa’s a mind to chase Frederick and Chrom out into the rain and down the trapdoor into Robin’s cellar while she runs her medical exam. Robin preempts this motion by stripping most of her layers before Lissa can say a word, conditioned by years of communal bathing facilities and no longer having the self-consciousness and modesty the gods gave an alley cat. Why must she be so distressing?

The men scatter.

“Really?” Lissa asks, because _really_.

Robin shrugs, unapologetic. She digs up extra lamps from somewhere and with a sigh, Lissa proceeds with the medical exam. Using equipment left behind in strategic corners of Robin’s home, Lissa goes through the motions of taking Robin’s standard measurements. Her weight is continuing its steady drop. Listening to her heartbeat and lungs feels like Lissa’s shoved cotton into her ears and then tossed her into a sealed room, but the numbers are in line with Robin’s baselines. Her reflexes are in working order.

“Alright, I need you to make a series of estimates,” Lissa instructs Robin while flipping a page in her water-stained notebook.

Robin’s face scrunches in distaste as she grumbles, “Have we seriously still not found a better method of quantifying these things? It’s all terribly subjective, even just from myself over time as my frames of reference adjust.”

“Hazards of personal experiences that can’t be shared. Until we find some way to standardize sensations like pain in ways that aren’t debilitating and injurious, we’re stuck with what we have so far.” Lissa always purposefully avoids thinking too deeply about Robin’s exceptionally high pain tolerance and how that throws so many of her self-reported metrics off whack. “Have you experienced nausea or numbness recently?”

“The numbness in my fingers and toes are still persisting,” Robin sighs. “Don’t think it’s getting worse or spreading at least.”

Lissa makes her dutiful notes.

An hour or two passes before Lissa finally snaps her notebook closed with a decisive _slap_ of pages hitting each other. The results – they aren’t good. The transparency has been increasing along with the washes of static. She’s started losing time, only a few seconds per episodes so far, but an undeniable worry among the others piling up around Robin.

Shrugging her folds of clothing back on, Robin asks, “Should we get hold of those two?”

Intellectually, Lissa knows that the cottage sits on strong foundations and has so many protective spells woven into the walls under the insulation and wallpaper that nothing less than the hand of a god can sweep it away. Still, the wind and rain outside pelts down so loudly, howling down the hills out to open water, that she has misgivings about the integrity of the roof above her. She’s not setting a toe out there more than she has to. “I think they can figure out when to come back on their own,” Lissa says. “Now more about this scroll from Chon’sin we were talking about earlier.”

* * *

Hideous embarrassment subsumes Lissa when she rounds the swell of a hill carved into a short cliff by the beach and sees Robin and Chrom standing a perfect yard away from each other in the midst of an undoubtably painfully private argument. Lissa immediately turns about face and flees before either of them has the smart idea of calling out to her and dragging her in. The skies have stopped dumping water down by the tons, but the ground is still thoroughly soaked and squelches under the treads of the boots Lissa borrowed from Robin. Light showers wash through every quarter hour or so and everyone had taken what chances they could to escape the claustrophobia of staying indoors hip-deep in all their words.

Lissa looks around for anything to drag her away from the increasing volume of voices behind her. Thankfully, Frederick’s walking along the shoreline in the far distance. She trots over.

“Milady,” he greets when she reaches him, silently cursing how heavy and clunky Robin’s boots are.

She complains, “Robin and Chrom are really going at it now. I _told_ him to not piss her off. They’re both going to regret it if this whole week gets spent on them arguing with each other. Who knows when Chrom will have this kind of free time again?”

“They’re both stubborn minds.”

“They’ve spent far more time yelling at each other now than talking to each other.”

The hiss of rain picking up again joins the rumbling of waves crashing against rocks and tiny pebbles. His gaze watches something above her right shoulder. Lissa turns to see what’s caught his attention: Robin storming back to her house, Chrom at her heels, hands chopping through the air, trying to make a point. She whirls around and jabs a finger at his chest, pushing him back.

Not catching a cold will be great, Lissa decides. “Rain’s picking up, let’s head inside too.”

But before they make it even a hundred yards from the house, the back door flings open once again, two sheathed swords in Robin’s hand, Chrom still trailing after her. Lissa and Frederick pull to an uneasy stop. Walking beyond her garden, Robin throws one of the swords back at Chrom – Falchion – and the meaning of what she intends becomes clear.

“Frederick,” Lissa says with despair, “this cannot be safe.”

“Draw or are you a coward?” Robin screams further up the grassy slope. The _wet_ grassy slope. One of them is inevitably going to slip and get stabbed messily.

“Of all the irresponsible things,” Frederick mutters with a viper’s venomous irritation.

Her _idiot_ brother Chrom holds out a hand, halt, at Frederick and Lissa when they take a step in the direction of the unfolding terrible decision. He shouts, “Stay out of this,” and –

And the sheer indigent rage welling in Lissa nearly lifts her right off her feet. She continues running forward, yelling at them both equally, “The rain’s picking up, for Naga’s sake, what do you two think you’re doing?”

“ _Some_ one thinks I’m going to keel over and die, without so much as a by your leave, like I’m some kind of village maiden who’s never gone more than ten miles around her home all her life and just contracted the winter’s sickness. Draw your sword. _Draw!_ ”

Chrom has one hand wrapped around Falchion’s hilt, the other clamped on its sheath, and he stares down at Robin’s spitting fury with a tight-lipped stillness. Where the wind scrubs a pink flush over Robin’s cheeks and ears, the rain washes the colors from Chrom’s face in his now silence.

“ _I’m not going to fucking disappear_.”

Falchion’s sheath thumps to the ground as the sky darkens with rain slamming down. Frederick tosses his coat over Lissa. Steel clashes and she winces.

In short work, Falchion hits the ground. Twitching her sword, Robin snaps at Chrom, “Pick that up. Again.”

Still silent, still frowning, Chrom picks Falchion up. Immediately, Robin sets upon him, while he’s still adjusting his grip over its wooden hilt. A swipe to an arm – parried, a feinted thrust – countered. The tip of Falchion cuts over Robin’s left hand which she ignores for a stab at Chrom’s right leg. He dances back through the garden and in a curve along the uneven ground, Robin chasing after with blows against each counter. Steel flashes too close to a head and Lissa jumps with an aborted yelp of indignation.

Distance pools between them. Blood wells from cuts along their arms and legs, one shallow line drags a hole through the side of Robin’s shirt, because these fools are sparring – can this even count as sparring, it’s too angry – with live steel. Chrom brings Falchion to rest against his shoulder.

“Are you two done yet?” Lissa calls out and tries scrubbing the rain off her face without it going down the collar of her shirt.

Falchion sweeps down in a strike from above.

By the time Frederick’s coat completely soaks through and the probability of him and Lissa catching colds reaches certainty, Robin and Chrom are still trading blows. They travel over the grass too much to trample it down into mud, but there are light scars here and there from a missed sweep or a redirected blow. A good third of Lissa’s mind is now consumed with dreaming of hoarding every blanket and sheet from Robin’s bed and huddling until the warmth returns to her bones, while they each take turns in the hot bath, hopefully not contracting pneumonia. The rest of her attention is split between running through her inventory of bandages and silk threads she brought and watching their faces through the curtain of rain.

There’d been a town in Valm, built along a road running out into an uncultivated field, that they marched through during their campaign at the western continent. Lissa had been too busy running with Maribelle maintaining order among the healers and clergy and pages and attendants of the army to witness what brought Robin back one night with a furious expression scrawled over her face and down the tense lines of her drawn back shoulders and stiffly upright spine. She’d received an “It’s fine,” to her question, “Robin?” The next day, muffled shouting came from the building commandeered for the officers and eight hours later, Robin came out with a self-satisfied expression, a wind-swept looking Chrom beside her.

“Did you win your argument?” Lissa asked.

“Yes,” Robin said decisively, face full of bronze caramel sweet satisfaction.

Lissa squints through the rain, trying to read the pinch of Robin’s brows, the corner of her mouth, the tightness of her jaw, the ridges of her knuckles as she knocks Falchion aside again. It falls from the blue and purple shades of Chrom’s hands streaked through with faint lines of red.

“That’s enough now,” Frederick says softly.

A breath heaves through Robin. She lowers the point of her sword. “Yeah,” she says.

“Alright,” says Chrom.

* * *

By some miracle, no one wakes up the next day coughing, sneezing, or feverish. Robin cuts bread for them all with her bandage wrapped hands. Over glasses of hot, fresh milk and toast loaded with thick layers of butter and jams, she hands Chrom a list, saying, “Here’s some material I’ll need after I’m done going through what Frederick brought this time. If memory serves, most of what’s relevant in the castle library should be light enough for mail. Not sure what will be in the university and mage guild stacks. And figure out where Laurent went. He didn’t answer my last letter.”

Chrom wipes apricot preserves off his fingers and accepts the list. “I’ll do that.”

Lissa sips her glass of milk, watching them, still uncertain about what exactly transpired yesterday. Dinner after everyone washed and dried off had been civil, Robin and Chrom the most like their old dynamic Lissa had seen in years.

The day’s progression clears none of her questions. Not even when the clouds finally thin and part, cold sunlight shining down during the afternoon, and Robin laughs at Chrom surrounded by a herd of sheep wandering over onto her property. Not when she sees them standing atop a hill, painted gold by the sun setting beyond the mountains, his head tilted down at something Robin says, animate with energy from her wide set feet to her hands miming a punch and the smile blurred by distance on her face. She sways, unconsciously, while Chrom leans in closer with an unspoken hunger that had been curled in his chest for years. He’d always taken what he could as his desires go unanswered.

“Should we stay longer?” Lissa asks Frederick, the two of them gathering clothing hung out to dry that didn’t fit around the fireplace.

Frederick glances towards the hill. “No,” he says. “I think they’ll be fine.”

* * *

* * *

* * *

The first time Chrom saw the sea, it had been a gray as hell day and he hadn’t realized what lay before him at first, where the thick, puckered clouds low in the sky met the wind whipped froth of water he’d been hearing for an hour while cutting his hands shoving dried, gray grass stalks out of the way.

He stood on the gray cliff face, dark rocks jutting down towards a thin, pale beach and the swirling foam of salty sea. The wind tugged strands of his hair into skimming across the top of his vision.

It wasn’t that impressive, he’d found himself thinking, more damp than anything. Not like a scarred battlefield or mountains rising into the glowing cold air or the castle in full flourish and decoration, awaiting the return of its king and army with quickening, abated breath. This just seemed like flat, unending noise and the skies finally opening above him just made him add wet and cold to his description as he turned tail and left after a few minutes staring mutely at the expanse before him.

They already packed all their belongings the night before, ready to strike out on a moment’s notice. But even as sky outside begins to brighten, Chrom finds himself reluctant to leave just yet and Lissa’s sleeping form and Frederick’s knowing gaze bring up no arguments. The home is empty of Robin’s presence; instead, he sees her standing on her pier, a breeze whipping her hair through the air in a riot of fine strands. Chrom pauses in his approach, staked to the hill halfway between her and her house.

He hadn’t meant to drive her out of Ylisstol and the past two and a half years had him snapping and pacing like something wretched. His emotions got the better of him, the ones he packed away in front of anyone else because he was the Exalt and she was Robin and that was the front they must maintain. But that afternoon, Chrom could almost taste copper along his jaw and his throat, he was so mad, and Robin had just watched him with those eyes, relaxed and lashes catching the sunlight, saying with a smile too kindly, “There’s no need for an expression like that. There’s no one to fight here.”

Chrom had thought with wild abandon, that maybe if he fought Robin then she’ll fucking stop looking like an extinguished fireplace.

Unrooting himself, he walks forward. As he pulls up beside her, she tilts her face to glance at him, then looks back forward at the crashing waves. The fur lining the collar of her cloak doesn’t seem to ward off the sharp, wet sea chill enough.

“You’re leaving then?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Chrom says, the first word he’s said since waking up and it comes out clogged. “As soon as Lissa wakes up. The hours of the day are too short for any delays.”

Cold fingers find his and he tangles their hands together. No longer held shut by her hand, her cloak yanks open with the wind and Chrom presses their shoulders together in a fruitless attempt to keep her warm.

He swallows roughly. Unsaid: Come back with us. Even more unsaid: Come back with _me_.

Her hand squeezes his and together, they silently watch the dawn sun rise over the waters.

**Author's Note:**

> [flipping through textbooks for work certificate exams] updating my multi-chapter fics, whoops, what's that, i'll do it eventually, when i'm not so bogged down reading hundreds of pages for class and work each week


End file.
